Nick Spark
Director, Producer
Producer/Director Nick Spark is a Los Angeles based writer and documentary filmmaker with a long standing passion for unconventional characters, including the oft-overlooked female heroine.
Nick’s newest film Right Footed, a documentary profile of disability advocate and world’s only armless airplane pilot Jessica Cox, is a deeply moving, inspirational examination of one woman’s personal courage. The documentary The Legend of Pancho Barnes and the Happy Bottom Riding Club which he conceived, produced and wrote, profiles a woman pilot from another era — Florence “Pancho” Barnes. Pancho, a rival of Amelia Earhart’s who bent gender rules, broke air speed records and took no prisoners, was largely forgotten until “Legend” debuted in 2009.
The film won the L.A. area Emmy and multiple festival awards in 2010, and continues to air on public television stations in the USA and abroad. An accomplished writer of non-fiction and history, Nick was the associate editor for Wings and Airpower magazines. He has also appeared on PBS’ History Detectives, Japan’s NHK and National Public
Radio concerning his research projects. He is an MFA graduate of the U.S.C. School of Cinematic Arts and has an undergraduate degree in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona. He also has the distinction of having won the student Emmy Award at U.S.C. as a grad student, and as an undergrad at the U of A, both for documentary films. He was the 2014 University of Arizona Honors College Alumnus of the Year.
